...the current nom de guerre of al-Qaeda in the Levant, which isn't to be confused with al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant...
Front reportedly handed himself over to the Army Intelligence.
The state-run National News Agency reported that Omar Khaled Shamtiyeh turned himself over to the Army Intelligence in North Leb.
The reasons remain vague.
Shamtiyeh was a member of the 2nd Artillery Regiment and used to serve at the al-Madfoun checkpoint on the coastal highway in the North.
He accused the military in his defection video of becoming a "subordinate to Hizbullah
...
Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as
The Resistanceand purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory...
" and of "killing the Sunni youths without any valid justification."
Several soldiers had announced their defection in recent months, voicing Shamtiyeh's argument.
In October also Lebanese soldier Abdul Qader Akkoumi, who was killed by the army in an ambush in the town of Assoun in the northern area of Dinniyeh, announced his defection.
Abdullah Shehadeh, who had defected to Nusra on October 10, urged troops to leave the army and "join the jihadists."
Shehadeh, who hails from the town of Mashha, defected hours after Nusra published a video in which the soldier Mohammed Antar announced that he had "joined the jihadists."
The increasing defection of troops from the army is not expected to affect the military, which comprises around 60,000 soldiers, according to military sources.
The first time a Lebanese soldier defected to the Nusra Front in neighboring Syria was in July. Corporal Atef Mohammed Saadeddine claimed in a video that his move came as a result of the injustice against Sunnis in Leb.
Islamists in the country claim that Sunnis are facing harassment by the army, which they accuse of working "under the command" of Hizbullah.
The Shiite party has sent thousands of fighters to Syria to help the regime of
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
against the rebels fighting his troops.
Hizbullah members have engaged in bloody gunbattles with al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli sh-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
Front, the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group and other Syrian opposition fighters in Syria and at the border region with Leb.
The jihadist groups took several Lebanese soldiers and coppers hostage in August and executed three of them following deadly festivities in and around the Bekaa border town of Arsal.